


the great.

by aistelle



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre: F/M, all I ever wanted to talk about was color, but I think I did a fair job, eehh, it's not terrible I swear, so I'll post it lol, this was for a final
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 16:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8851765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aistelle/pseuds/aistelle
Summary: Jay Gatsby's renamed himself many times over the years.





	

1.

Jimmy Gatz saw color for the first time under the glow of a flimsy streetlamp tucked in some nondescript Midwestern town. He had been preparing to go home and have supper with his ma and pa when an aristocrat or another of the sort had driven by, his car a decadent gold bright enough to catch the eye even in such dim lighting, and catch the eye it did: Jimmy had watched it pass with an abrupt wonderment, his child’s mind already turning gears as he crafted a life as brilliant as the luminescent streaks the coupé drew in the dark blue sky.

A stoplight turned green, a beacon illuminating the road ahead, and the car sped off into the distance, taking its splendid gold with it—no matter. Jimmy carried a piece of it with him now, in visions burned hyperreal into his eyes, visions more acute than any reality he had existed in thus far.

2.

James Gatz arrived at the farm the next morning. The parents fussed over his tardiness and he bid the two curt apologies before sitting down for a meal. He shoveled down the food, black and brown and grey, and consoled himself with thoughts of future dining at cherry wood tables teeming with rainbows of plenty.

He wiped the corners of his mouth with a black, sooty handkerchief.

James compiled a schedule of worthy deeds that night and the moon, a pale yellow, watched over him as he slept.

3.

James Gatz grew quickly grew tired of his monochromic life, grew tired of the listless grey around him and with every day that passed the fragment of gold he retained burned brighter. On a particularly blue morning, he gathered a few belongings and walked away from the house that had contained him for so long, the grass impossibly greener with every step.

4.

James Gatz threw on a green jersey. A particularly fine day; sunlight hit the water, sending iridescent sprays of light across the beach, sand sparkling a grand gold; the sky seemed impossibly blue, water a soft green, the air was awash with the smell of auspicious fortune; a day so lurid it seemed like the line between reality and dream had blurred when on his hands and knees he spotted it: a yacht splitting open the sea on the horizon. The gleam, _the gleam_ of gold so far away and yet within grasp…

Jay Gatsby manned a rowboat and _reached_.

5.

Jay Gatsby stood in front of Dan Cody’s casket, draft notice tucked into a black tux. Time had flown by in a blur of blue coats and gold champagne, but it was a lifetime ago that a boy had sought gold on that propitious day. In the end, the boy seemed to have failed: someone had swindled Gatsby’s inheritance—but there was no time to mourn. The war was calling.

6.

Daisy Fay sat daintily in her extravagant home, a golden fairy wrapped in white fabrics, rejoicing in her technicolor splendor an eternity removed from the struggles of those below her. Jay looked at her like she was an angel; Gatsby prostrated his being before her like a man would his salvation.

When he captured her lips, reality rewrote itself again, gold and green and blue blossoming behind his eyes as red caressed red and neither James nor Jay had ever been in love—but the intoxication of Daisy; her voice, soft and mellifluous, amok with wealth, branded herself onto his eyes and for the first time Jay allowed someone else to wield his paintbrush.

The night reached for the stars, engulfing them one by one until the sky was silent and black and, searching for light, securely fastened itself onto the wing of a fairy, watching in wonderment as the glitter of her trail lit the world anew. It _wouldn’t_ last, it couldn’t last; the war was calling, and—

— _gunshots, grenades, explosions of black dust;_ dirt in the eyes there’s dirt in his eyes _he can’t see God_ he can’t see where red sprays bright and bold over the dead sea of brown// why won’t he die why can’t he die//Jay Gatsby had visions burned **hyperreal** into his eyes.

7.

Gatsby stood above the festivity erupting below him, giggles floating through the air as girls in yellow dresses pranced across the ballroom and drunk men, faces burning red, trailed behind them. He waved a hand and a butler, silent and fitted starkly in black, pulled a lever. The chaos was promptly showered with a neon sea of synthetic color and Gatsby turned, suddenly disgusted with the display. The war had been made bearable only by his aching hunger for Daisy’s letters, but he had been forced to stop replying—no matter. He was a rich man, coffers brimming with figurative gold—Daisy _loved him_ , Daisy loves **him**.

Gatsby strolled with trained composure past his new yellow coupé under the pale yellow of the moon to the end of his dock to where it was: a green light spanning the water across the land. The glow, _the glow_ of green so close it seemed impossible he could fail to grasp it…

Gatsby stood at the end of the dock and _reached_.

~~(In the grey valley of ashes, the blue eyes of T.J. Eckleburg peered over the rim of gold glasses.)~~

8.

Jay Gatsby brought Daisy into their home. He had never felt so alive as he had then, showering Daisy with the fruits of his labor: rainbows of satins and silks, cottons and cashmeres floating through the air and landing softly with sighs of relief around her. The cumulation of all his visions, of years and years’ worth of late nights waking in cold sweat reaching for an absent warmth across his bed, of cherry wood tables teeming with plenty, of gold yellow coupés drawing luminescent streaks across dark blue skies: all of it was here in the red of Daisy’s lips and on that lurid day reality did not dare to be anything but dream.

That night, Jay danced and danced and danced until he had relearned the feel of Daisy, the feel of a world once more secured, and—

_In the grey valley of ashes, the blue eyes of T.J. Eckleburg peered over the rim of gold glasses._

9.

Jay Gatsby waited for Daisy to return. Jay Gatsby waited for Daisy—Daisy who _loved him_ , Daisy who loves **him** —to return to where she had always belonged. Jay Gatsby did not see the grey specter approaching him.

~~(But Eckleburg did.)~~

In the grey valley of ashes, the blue eyes of T.J. Eckleburg watched through the lens of gold glasses as red sprayed bright and bold under the rolling expanse of blue.

\-----

0.

Nick Caraway stood under the light of an elaborate, flimsy streetlamp tucked into the depths of West Egg, regarding the tombstone of “James ‘Jimmy’ Gatz.” Henry Gatz had had the final say, and so the name would remain there immortal, its grey stone heavy against the dilapidated mansion it stood before. Nobody bothered to tend to it, the increasingly vine-draped walls causing it to fade into the green disarray behind it without so much a whisper. Nick watched the sky darken, sunlight dwindling as the night closed its pitch-black curtains to the world.

_There would be no moon that night._

In the grey valley of ashes, the blue eyes of T.J. Eckleburg stood unseeing through the lens of gold glasses, perched high above the road. A stoplight turned red, but the blue coupé did not bother to pause, escaping forever into the darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> (copying and pasting my project notes, cuz I'm lazy lol)
> 
> So, the inspiration of this, very obviously, is color. I myself am a person fascinated by color, but strangely not so much by the colors themselves—though they are indeed stunning, and what makes life come to life—but rather by what they mean, and most importantly, how lonely they make everyone. Every single person perceives color with minute differences than another (that’s what I’d like to believe, anyhow—the scientists who discuss whether one person’s red is another’s blue are really depressing) and therefore no one can ever truly share their world.
> 
> Color is something Fitzgerald wove deeply into The Great Gatsby: Gatsby’s green light and green wonder, the constant gold surrounding the rich, the energetic but ultimately empty yellow Gatsby settled for in response… the bleak grey of the valley of ashes—all these colors are an integral part of his work, but color, being such a common and familiar concept, seems to fade into the subconscious of readers. I dedicated this “short story” (intended to be read more as a strange free-verse poem) to pulling “color” into the foreground of The Great Gatsby.
> 
> To accomplish this, I first simplified color: usually I love to play with distinct shades of various spectrums to create more vivid imagery, but in this piece, I never strayed past basic elementary terms: plain red, blue, yellow, etc., to help make connections between each color’s theme and meaning. Second, I tied the colors to personality theory: “Gatsby,” or Gatsbies, and his amazing execution of performative theory: case in point, the title: simply “the great.” Who exactly, is Gatsby? Had there ever been a Gatsby at all?
> 
> I used different colors to signify Jimmy/James/Jay Gatz/Gatsby’s desires, fortunes, and creations. Even as Gatsby tossed away names one after another with each new goal, each new whim; the “colors” that made up his reality, his visions, and his dreams stayed constant. By connecting these consistent colors to Gatsby’s extremely inconsistent personalities, I hoped to create a sense of cohesion for the reader even as they trudge through Gatsby’s chaos as he constructs new personalities, one after another, while highlighting the cores of each one: what made Gatsby desire each change.


End file.
